THIRTY-SIX

Six men, none over five feet tall, melted into view all around us. Blowguns—held ramrod straight and perfectly still by their sides—towered a foot or more above each of their heads. Bright red tattooed lines zigzagged from mouths to earlobes; six-inch porcupine quills bristled on either side of their full lips; macaw-feather earrings dashed back from stretched earlobes. Six flat, wide, staring faces scanned us from head to toe, blue-black bowl-cut hair stark against the gleaming foliage behind them. They were naked except for twisted fibers that wrapped around their waist.

The first impression was of sinewy muscle tensed and ready, of violence only casually held back, perhaps by curiosity alone.

One of them stepped forward. A squat man with a powerful head and jaw, his calves bulging from the strain of the ligatures of palm fiber tied just under his knees. Twin quivers holding smaller blowgun darts crossed his chest. Over his shoulder, the slain spider monkey hung limp, its hands and feet already trussed. Held in place by a leather strap across his forehead, another man—slightly taller than the rest—carried a giant tortoise on his back, its prehistoric head and neck stretching down past his knees.

They gaped at us, at me especially, with an unguarded mix of fascination, lust, and revulsion. A wave of language rippled through the group.

Face lit by an eerie column of yellowish green light that seeped through the canopy, the squat man took another step toward Omar, chest puffed out, tightly sprung. A bone curled through his septum; in his left earlobe he wore a 35mm film canister. Fierce brown eyes peered out from under a heavy brow. In the middle of his forehead was a depression as big as a small saucer, as if someone or something had bashed in his skull and he had lived.

Through the mesh of greenery, the tips of three more arrows emerged, pointing from various angles toward us. Three more men stepped out from the vegetation.

The hunter opened his mouth to speak to Omar; I tried not to gasp. Each of his teeth had been sharpened to a point; several were pitch-black, others a dark yellow. Out came a blur of language, highly articulated, completely incomprehensible to my ears. Omar answered slowly, repeating his own name a few times. The men visibly recoiled to hear their language coming from this non-­Tatinga, his enormously pregnant gringa at his side. As he spoke, Omar made eye contact with each man, before at last turning back to their leader.

“Pacchu,” the man said. The whites of his eyes shown as they widened in their background of black-and-red-stained skin.

“It means ‘Possum Face,’ ” Omar said. “My Tatinga name.” The men flashed each other angry looks, pointing at my belly, my hair. “Lily, this is MiddleEye, Splitfoot’s son. I won’t say his Tatinga name, understand?”

I nodded, not a drop of saliva in my mouth available to speak.

MiddleEye scowled, barked some sort of joke at the men; they laughed and took a step forward, shoulders relaxed, emboldened, many of them gesturing at me.

“They think you’re a missionary. They’re asking for gifts,” Omar said, never taking his eyes off the men. Black blood dripped from the spider monkey onto a wide, waxy leaf beneath him.

The taller hunter with the tortoise pointed at Omar’s machete and smirked, inspiring another escalating volley of Tatinga before Omar handed it over, along with his gun and another knife. They took turns running their fingers along the machete’s blade, nodding appreciatively before turning to me.

The chirring of insects throbbed in my ears; my arms trembled at my sides. I could feel myself being chewed away from the inside. The eyes of the men bore through me.

“Do you have anything?” Omar said.

“My knife, that’s all.”

“Give it to me.”

“But it’s—”

“Give me the goddamned knife.”

My hands shook so hard I almost couldn’t free my switchblade from my belt. Never thought I’d feel nostalgia for a knife, but it was one of the few things I’d managed to hold on to, and by then I’d skinned and cleaned countless animals with it and never went anywhere without it. The last weapon between us, gone.

MiddleEye accepted the present from Omar, turned it over a few times, sneered, and handed it back to one of the men, who took it and tucked it in his liana belt. He took a step toward me; his rank breath steaming up at me, a smell of rancid fat emanating from him, pointy teeth glimmering obsidian in the weak light. He reached up seemingly to touch my hair; I bent my head slightly so he could do it and be done with it.

He touched it gently at first, then grabbed a handful and yanked hard, pulling out a few long scraggly red hairs and holding them up like a prize. Omar took a step forward but didn’t stop him. Sweat pouring down his chest, he stood close, his eyes begging me to keep my wits about me. The men laughed, relaxing now as they threw strands of my hair up into the tea-colored light, warming to the afternoon’s entertainment. Smirking, MiddleEye put his hand flat on my belly and said something I sensed wasn’t a compliment. Omar stiffened, took another step, almost between us now, but the hunter grinned with his row of cat teeth and moved his hand, slowly, tauntingly, up toward my breast. Omar smacked his hand away. A moment later; a solid thud. An arrow pierced the top of Omar’s foot, pinning him to the ground, the shaft humming in the dim light.

He howled, dropping to the earth in a crouch just as the hunter who’d shot him dropped noiselessly from the trees above us, landing with another arrow already drawn and trained at Omar’s heart.

I knelt down beside him, my face inches from his. In his: agony, but also a command: Do not fall apart. Keep your cool.

Omar snapped the arrow close to the top of his foot and tossed away the shaft. Lifting his foot from the ground, he reached under it and pulled out the arrow from the other side, then threw it at the men’s feet. Something about this seemed to change the power dynamic among the men. A smaller hunter with close-set eyes and a shaved head began to argue with MiddleEye, jabbing his finger in the air at me, then Omar, then me again. MiddleEye bickered back at him, but it seemed like a draw, and in moments they turned, vanishing in an ocean of waving ferns.

Limping, Omar leapt after them. I froze in place, immobile with fear until the tribesman who had shot him through the foot screamed in my ear and I broke into a stumbling run, the hunter on my heels.